It's been almost a year since residents of the Fort Wayne Community Schools district made it clear in a petition drive they were unwilling to see their property taxes raised to pay for $500 million in building improvements and renovations. But even opponents of the plan concede the schools have problems that need to be fixed.

In the second of a three-part series, The News-Sentinel examines what options are available to FWCS to pay for the work.


The process by which public schools are funded is a complicated one. Forgive the pun, but it rarely makes sense.

When officials with Fort Wayne Community Schools started using terms like “CPF” and “levies” last year in relation to their $500 million plan to repair the district's aging infrastructure, taxpayers found 500 million reasons to say no.

What's easier to understand is that problems with heating and cooling systems, plumbing, masonry and roofing aren't going away. Neither is the lack of classroom space to accommodate special programs that didn't exist when most of the schools were built in the 1960s and '70s.

“The only way we can fix our buildings is with capital project (funds) and a bond issue,” said Kathy Friend, FWCS' chief financial officer. “If we don't get a bond issue, then things will not get done.”

The district comprises 64 buildings, 53 of them schools, and many are deteriorating faster than they can be fixed. Typically, a school district would dip into its capital projects fund to pay for the repairs, but a quick shake of the FWCS piggybank found nothing was falling out.

“There's simply not enough money … to pay for these projects on a pay-as-you-go process,” Friend said.

Calling school funding complicated is probably an understatement. Capital projects make up only a small percentage of FWCS' overall budget, which totals about $284 million for 2008. From there, the fund is divided into subgroups that have their own line items - and yes, the confusion ensues. All in all, FWCS could have $36.5 million in the fund this year, but of course, that's not the case. In fact, more money has to be taken out before you can get to what the district considers the actual capital projects fund.

Off the top the district takes out money for utilities and insurance, debt payments and the racial-balance fund. “We have to follow some very rigid guidelines on how we do the capital projects fund,” Friend said.

FWCS is the only district in the state with a racial-balance fund, which essentially does what it says - it helps achieve racial balance by paying for specialized staff members and programs throughout the district. The man who led the campaign against the building project last year said the fund, created to comply with a court settlement, is a waste of money.

“That's money they could have spent on fixing (buildings),” said Evert Mol, who formed Code Blue Schools, which earlier this year gave birth to a similarly named political action committee that aims to unseat board members in favor of a bond. He estimated that since the fund's inception in 1989 the district could have saved enough money without it to fix the buildings without a bond. This year, FWCS set aside about $7.8 million for racial balance.

FWCS spokeswoman Krista Stockman said the solution is not as easy as eliminating the racial-balance fund. First, the district lacks the power to do so. Second, even if it did, it wouldn't want to. “We absolutely don't want to cut into our programs to fix our buildings,” she said.

When stripped to its essence, the capital projects fund has about $19.9 million left for facilities each year, specifically $10.4 million for building improvements. Other money goes toward equipment purchases, building and equipment repairs, technology, energy savings contracts and land purchases. FWCS officials would be happy if they had that much going forward.

Next year, the fund will begin to drop drastically as the district starts to feel the effects of property tax caps passed as part of Gov. Mitch Daniels' bill to reduce the state's reliance on property taxes. Next year, FWCS expects to lose $730,000 from the capital projects fund alone.

“We're getting really nervous about what 2009 is going to look like,” Friend said.

In 2010, the district will take a cut of $2.6 million to its overall budget. Friend doesn't know yet know how much of that will have to come from the capital projects fund.

“The solution hasn't changed,” FWCS Superintendent Wendy Robinson said. “There will never be that much money (to fund building repairs). There's no savings account that we go to. … Our reality is whatever money we're going to get is what we have to deal with the emergencies that we're going to have.”